Hachette to Merely Double the Price of Library eBooks, not Triple

On Thursday of last week I and many other blogs posted about an email from library ebook distributor OverDrive. They wee passing along the bad news that Hachette would soon be tripling the prices that libraries would have to pay for ebooks.. Today I've learned that the email was not completely correct.

It looks like Hachette doesn't hate libraries nearly as much we first thought.

OverDrive posted a correction on their blog post from Friday (first spotted by DBW). It seems they goofed on their math. It' turns out that prices will be 2.2 times current prices, not that they will be 2.2 times more than current prices. So the prices are doubling, not tripling.

Here's the updated note:

*Editor’s Note: In our initial email to library partners announcing the Hachette price increase, we made an error in calculating the percentage of the increase. On average, the cost of Hachette eBooks for libraries will increase by 104 percent, or 2.04 times the current price.

Curiously enough, OD didn't make any effort to spread this information around. I could almost think that they let the incorrect info circulate as a way of turning the public against Hachette, if not for the fact I don't think they're that Machiavellian. In any case, Hachette still hates libraries.